The Twelve Days of XMas
by T. Costa
Summary: For Zarazia: A series of murders hits a little close to home for Cloud Strife, sometime-Private Investigator and former hero of the world. Warnings: Character death, discussion of corpses and murder. Merry *%&  ing Christmas. Non-romantic.
1. Chapter 1

**The Twelve Days of X-Mas  
><strong>**Chapter One**

_For Zarazia_

_SUMMARY: A series of murders hits a little close to home for Cloud Strife, sometime-Private Investigator and former hero of the world._

_WARNINGS: Character death, discussion of corpses and murder. Merry *%&^ ing Christmas._

_RATING: R for swearing and descriptions of death/violence._

_AUTHOR'S NOTES: I had a blast writing this, even if it is rather dark and un-Christmasy. Trying to write something that I thought Zarazia might enjoy was difficult, but fun, and I hope I did a good job. Thanks to Woodster for alpha-reading and VulcanElf for an amazing beta-read._

_EDIT: Feel free to head on over to my profile, where you will find a link to download a nicely-formatted PDF e-book of this, in it's entirety, for your perusal offline, thanks to the Fanfiction E-book Project at the Genesis Awards._

* * *

><p><em>I am clearly broken and no one knows what to do<em>

_Peaces of the puzzle don't fit, so I pound them into you  
>Itching is the pulse inside<br>Creeping up to come alive  
>It's just doing what it's gonna do<em>

_Times are looking grim these days_  
><em>Holding on to everything<em>  
><em>It's hard to draw the line<em>

_-Korn featuring Skrillex, "Get Up!"_

* * *

><p>It was raining, which seemed <em>really<em> cliché to Tifa's ingrained sense of aesthetics.

Still, it was raining when Cloud walked into the bar – wearing a leather _duster_, of all things, _so_ unlike him – and Tifa inwardly winced at the mess he was making on her nice hardwood floors. Puddles began at the front door of Seventh Heaven, and ended in a very large pool beneath where Cloud was now sitting at the bar.

Thankfully, she'd chosen the vinyl-topped bar stools, rather than opting for the leather ones that had so caught her eye when furnishing the place.

Also unlike him, Cloud immediately ordered a double of scotch whisky. Cloud was more of a rum person, when he could be coerced into drinking in the first place. At this point, Tifa began to get an inkling that something was very wrong in the world of Cloud Strife, her husband and longtime friend.

Really, after eleven years of marriage, she should have known right from the beginning.

She had been surprised when Reeve had called, asking for his expertise (Cloud having been semi-drafted into the police force of Edge, he'd become something of a private eye as he approached middle age), but not unduly worried. Now, a tendril of fear began to weave its way from her gut around her spine, chilling her in a manner that the fire she had just stoked could not help.

She held her hand out for his jacket, which he peeled off with a wrinkle of his nose.

"It's Cid's, sorry," he said, by way of explanation. Tifa didn't reply as she hung the sopping mess up on a hook near the fireplace; it'd drip off quietly there, and the mess would evaporate from the flagstones of the hearth rather than making water-stains across her floor.

She let him drink in silence, locking the door and cleaning up while he sipped. The warmth of the drink pooled in his stomach, calming him and steeling him for what came next: telling Tifa and the others.

Once Tifa had mopped up everything, she came to sit next to him at the bar. Cloud's face was normally quite pale, of course; so was Tifa's. It was a lovely side-effect both of having grown up in the cloudy climate of Nibelheim, and growing up so near a Mako reactor.

Now, however, Cloud looked almost bloodless. As if he were about to faint right off the chair. He'd seen something terrible tonight.

"Was it that bad?" she asked, gently.

"Awful," Cloud replied, his eyes glazing over.

_Reeve's voice had shaken badly when he'd called Cloud. It was going to be bad, he knew, but nothing could prepare him for the mess he found. The mess that was a nightmare, horrible to behold, and yet, so very_ familiar_._

_Pieces – and that was all it could be called:_ pieces_, a hand here, an arm there – of the victim were strewn about a small cave just outside of Midgar. They might not have known who it was but for some familiar items and the infamous gold gauntlet left out prominently, for the murderer had incinerated the head. It was, perhaps, the only way that he could have been properly killed, considering his amazingly fast recuperation time and healing ability. It had been done with Flare, if Cloud knew his materia, but he'd be calling in Yuffie for a positive identification later._

"_Whoever did it must've done a helluva lot of research," Cid had said, scratching his head. He looked a little ragged: his eyes were suspiciously red, the skin around them puffy. Cloud knew that Cid Highwind had done his mourning already. "Everyone knew he was damn-near immortal, and his hearing was just 'bout superhuman. How someone coulda snuck up on him..."_

"_It must have been someone he knew," Cloud had replied. "No one else could have gotten the better of him otherwise."_

_Reeve shook his head. "At least his dreams will be peaceful now," he said, mournfully. Then again, Reeve was a mournful sort of person. Cloud was willing to bet he was blaming himself for this death right now._

In the present, Cloud shook himself back to awareness. Tifa was looking at him expectantly. He shivered, flashes of blood, gore, and burnt flesh flashing across his mind's eye once more.

"What _I_ want to know is," he said, "How does one go about killing a man like Vincent Valentine, and survive?"

* * *

><p>They weren't going to have a funeral (Yuffie had stomped her protest of the concept: "His whole <em>life<em> was a goddamn funeral," and no one could really object to that), but Shera proved herself to be the pious one of the group, insisting that his _soul_ couldn't rest until they'd laid his physical _remains_ to rest as well. It was a small affair: no press, just AVALANCHE and a few other friends he'd gained throughout the years, held a mere two days after he'd been killed and before the news really had time to percolate throughout Gaea.

The funeral procession wound its way through the snow-covered hills outside Wutai. Yuffie pouted; whether it was because she hadn't wanted a funeral for Vincent, or because she had to wear the ceremonial kimono, Cloud was unsure.

The ninja had nearly gone apoplectic at the thought of burying Vincent in Rocket Town, as Shera had originally suggested. The launch site's proximity to the Nibel mountains and the cursed town within was exactly the wrong spot for Vincent Valentine to be buried at. No one could really argue that point, and so when Yuffie suggested Wutai as a final resting place for the gunslinger, nobody objected.

Later that night, she gathered up Cloud, Tifa and Cid and hit the bar in what she announced was a "far more fitting goodbye ceremony," and proceeded to get the group of them shit-faced drunk.

Cloud resented this the next morning, when he had to attend to yet another crime scene, this time with a hangover.

* * *

><p>"I figured I'd better call you in before anyone else," the Kalm police chief, a scrawny little man named Charles, told Cloud. Cloud blinked and tried to filter what the man was saying through the pounding in his head.<p>

"I mean, we found him in his office and at first it looked like a suicide," Charles said. "But it was locked from the outside and there was another set of footprints, and we found glove-prints in the dust on the rafter he was hung from. And he wasn't wearing gloves."

Cloud followed him uneasily into the WRO headquarters. Choppers were flying overhead, their beat reverberating through his skull _(fwopfwopfwopfwopfwop)_ in an enormously unpleasant manner. Electric lights flickered on and off gloomily, adding to Cloud's general misery. Charles led him to an elevator and, to Cloud's horror, punched in the top floor - where the WRO Commissioner's office was located.

Up and up they climbed. The ascent took forever, an eternity of agonized waiting. Cloud finally exited the elevator and was relieved to find that he didn't smell the sharp, coppery tang of blood in the air. It would have, he thought, been more than his poor stomach could take at the moment.

Cloud often wondered to himself, in his heart of hearts, if he was getting too detached. He shouldn't be able to look at the body of one of his best friends - a man who helped him save the world - so apathetically. Six years of being an on-call detective for some of the largest police forces in the world had certainly made their mark on him.

Although, perhaps, it was seeing Zack gunned down that had changed him. He supposed he'd never know.

The police forensics people offered to bring Reeve's body down, but Cloud wanted to have a look at the crime scene unaltered, something he'd not been able to really do with Vincent's. The death of two members of AVALANCHE in less than a week had him feeling on-edge.

He'd bet his entire fortune that these two deaths were related. But he had no way to prove it yet.

The Kalm PD cleared out of the room, leaving only Cloud and the police chief, who stood in the corner, pointedly _not_ looking at Reeve's body.

There were greasy prints on Reeve's pants, average adult-sized ones. A close examination of the footprints revealed to him that this was, in fact, the work of two people. They wore the same style of shoe, and the same size, but one of the people – whoever it was who had slipped the rope over Reeve's head rather than the person who hoisted him up there – was wearing the wrong size shoe.

Cloud found himself mentally flipping through the first crime scene in his mind. "Take pictures of everything," he said, turning to the police chief. "Document everything you find on and around him. Take detailed pictures of the footprints. I have to go check on something."

Cloud left the room, his hangover forgotten. He flicked his phone open and dialed Cid's number, knowing the pilot would be just as hungover, if not more so.

"It's Cloud," he said, interrupting Cid's flow of innovative swear words. "Reeve's dead, and I need a ride. I need to go look at the first crime scene. Get Yuffie." He paused briefly. "Don't tell anyone yet, and come get me from WRO headquarters in Kalm."

* * *

><p>Cloud had known that Cid would take him seriously. He hadn't thought that Cid would arrive a mere twenty minutes later.<p>

Yuffie was an ashen color that had absolutely nothing to do with _her_ hangover, which appeared to be nonexistent. Cloud found himself _unbelievably_ jealous of her.

"Reeve's dead?" she whispered, and it was at that moment that Cloud realized she'd had feelings for the older man.

"Murdered, just like Vincent," Cloud said. He paused. "Well, not just like Vincent. They hung Reeve in his office, tried to make it look like a suicide. They didn't try hard enough, though."

"They?" Cid said. He too looked unbelievably chipper for someone who'd drunk half a bar's worth of alcohol the night previous.

"They," Cloud affirmed. "I found footprints. They were the same, right down to the style of shoe and size. One pair was wobbly, like the person was slipping around inside of them. _One_ of them was wearing the wrong shoe size."

Yuffie sank into the copilot's chair, legs gone suddenly nerveless. Cloud knew the feeling.

Cid handed him something in a sealed container, and their inebriation-less state made a sudden kind of sense to Cloud. It was Tifa's patented hangover remedy. It tasted like Ifrit's bowels going down, but it worked. Cloud held his nose and chugged it.

"Who'd want to kill Reeve?" Yuffie said. "He's done nothing but good in the last decade, helping get rid of monsters, and build roads, and clean up Shinra's mess."

"I haven't got a clue," Cloud admitted. "But I think they might be the same people who got Vincent."

Cid nodded. "Hang on to something, kids. We're gonna get back to Midgar in ten seconds flat."

The crime scene had been blocked off, but there had been no posted guard, so Cloud was unsurprised to find that it had been wiped clean.

"But look," Cloud said, pointing. "Same two sets of footprints. This was definitely the work of two people, and they definitely killed both Vincent and Reeve."

"What does that mean, though?" Yuffie asked. She was still ashen-looking but doing better, as far as Cloud could tell. He'd see about having her talk with Tifa when they got back to Edge.

"It means," Cloud said, feeling a little melodramatic as he said it, "that we're dealing with a pair of serial killers."

"It gets worse," Cid pointed out, chomping on his cigarette and gesturing at Cloud. He seemed to be figuring they had already come to the same conclusion.

"How could it get _worse?_" Yuffie demanded, also turning to Cloud.

Cloud hesitated, and then spoke carefully. "It looks like whoever is doing this might be targeting members of AVALANCHE," he said. "Any of us could be next."


	2. Chapter 2

**The Twelve Days of X-Mas  
><strong>**Chapter Two**

_EDIT: Feel free to head on over to my profile, where you will find a link to download a nicely-formatted PDF e-book of this, in it's entirety, for your perusal offline, thanks to the Fanfiction E-book Project at the Genesis Awards._

Two days had passed, and Cloud hadn't been able to do anything. Tifa thought he was being paranoid, and insisted on putting up her usual Christmas decorations at the bar, refusing to listen to Cloud's admonitions to keep things quiet around their house. It was a week until Christmas and she just couldn't stomach not having _some_ Christmas cheer.

Asking her to talk to Yuffie hadn't much helped matters – Tifa seemed to be in denial about a great deal these days. Not that Cloud could blame her, but he doubted she'd be denying anything if she'd seen Vincent Valentine rent limb from limb, or Reeve Tuesti hanging from a beam, his neck at an awkward angle and a thin trickle of blood dripping from his nose.

Cloud sat upright. How would being hung force his nose to bleed? Reeve had died from a classic case of hangman's fracture – his spinal cord had been severed. He'd not even had the time to be strangled, and his optical capillaries had not exploded. So why the blood on his face?

He ducked into his office and used his phone to place a call to Kalm PD, who routed him through to the CSI division.

"Yeah, we thought that was weird, too," the coroner said. "But the nose was broken. Looks like the Commissioner struggled with whoever captured him, and they punched him in the nose, which made him lose consciousness. I'd hazard a guess he wasn't even conscious when he died."

"Did you get any samples from the scene?"

"No epithelials, if that's what you're aiming for," the coroner said, dashing Cloud's hopes. "We did get some fibers from their gloves that were lodged in his epidermis, but they're pretty standard winter issue."

"Alright, thanks for your time," Cloud said, preparing to hang up.

"Now, then, Mr. Strife," the coroner interjected. "I was just about to call you when I got the page to answer the phone. Something's come up."

"What?" Cloud momentarily felt light-headed, as if his blood pressure had suddenly dropped.

"Mr. Tuesti's body has gone missing."

* * *

><p>Cloud didn't bother trying to call Cid, instead opting to drive his motorcycle out to the morgue at Kalm. A sweep of the office showed no visible prints, which meant something that chilled him: the murderers knew how his investigation was going, and they were close enough to have been tailing him – and they knew what he was looking for. He shuddered and asked to see Reeve's clothing, which had <em>not<em> gone missing.

The two men searched the whole mess and discovered several food stains, what looked to be tear stains, and one lone, solitary brown hair. DNA analysis proved that it was not Reeve's and was female, but otherwise, they had no idea who they were looking for.

"How many women become serial killers?" Cloud mused, as the two men sat down to write up the report.

"Not many," the coroner, a man in his mid-thirties who called himself Zane, replied. "The thing is, you're not dealing with a serial killer. You're dealing with a pair of spree killers, which is a _lot_ more dangerous."

"How so?" Cloud asked, sitting upright very suddenly.

"Serial killers kill because of a general psychological need," Zane said. "There is almost always a cooling-off period and there was no noticeable one in these cases. Spree killers, unfortunately, are usually planning the murders they perpetrate, and for a specific reason."

"So it's not to fulfill a psychological _need_," Cloud mused.

"Most likely, no," Zane said, shaking his head. "It could be for any reason: hatred of the people in question, to fulfill the terms of some sort of bizarre obsessive-compulsive disorder quirk, or most likely, for revenge."

_Revenge_. It had been at the back of Cloud's mind since he'd gotten the news about Vincent, of course, but now that someone said it aloud, it felt _right_.

But who? There were so many people who could want revenge against AVALANCHE.

Cloud thanked Zane once again and stepped outside to call Tifa, who was home safe. He needed help, and he couldn't think of anyone who COULD help – Vincent and Reeve were dead. They were the two people who he would most likely have asked to help him: there was no one better if you wanted a clearheaded approach to a problem.

Cloud stopped short. Vincent and Reeve _were_ his two go-to guys for logic. Time and time again he'd approached the two of them to get their view of a particular case or situation. They'd also been offed first. Whoever was doing this knew his _modus operandi._

He'd call Cid – and then he broke into a cold sweat. Cid and Shera were the two most likely to help him should the other two men be out of commission. He drew his phone out, launching himself out into the muddy streets of Kalm and heading toward WRO headquarters.

"Cid," he gasped out as he ran. "Call me back. Please, _for the love of God_, call me back."

There was a beep. His message had been received, but he doubted there would be anyone to get it.

It felt weird to enter WRO headquarters and find it abustle with activity; somehow, he'd expected it to be near-deserted in the wake of Reeve's death. But then again, the world never stopped just because one person died.

"I need to get an airship to Rocket Town," he said to the receptionist. "And I need to do it right now."

"It's pouring outside," the receptionist said, reasonably. "Can it not wait?"

Cloud shook his head, and felt briefly faint with relief when the receptionist did as she was asked and called up to the air division to get someone downstairs to talk to him.

* * *

><p>Yuffie and Tifa had joined him. Barret had gone home after Vincent's funeral and had no idea what was going on; Nanaki had the gist of it, but had returned to Cosmo Canyon to meditate and research. Yuffie was at home in Wutai and on the phone with Tifa when Cloud had called her, so she agreed to meet them in Rocket Town. It was only the three of them.<p>

So there were only three when they burst into Cid's house at Rocket Town and discovered the grisly remains.

They were laid out on the bed in some sort of gruesome parody of tenderness, holding each other, faces calm. Both were completely naked, which Cloud couldn't rule out as being normal for them, but he rather thought it was symbolic of... something. Either way, they both had long slash-marks on their arms and down the insides of their legs: directly where the femoral artery was located. It would have been over in minutes.

This time, Cloud didn't bother to hold back. He stepped outside of the room and his breakfast rushed up to greet him.

* * *

><p>They flew Zane out to deal with the scene. Cloud knew he could trust the coroner; he knew very little about the coroners at Nibelheim and Rocket Town, and he wanted nothing to do with the esoteric healer-types that Wutai employed for such dealings.<p>

Yuffie and Tifa took on the role of CSI tech, photographing everything in the house and combing over the place to find any evidence whatsoever. They found used hypodermic needles and syringes, which nicely corresponded with Zane's discovery that the couple had been drugged with the soporific drug methaqualone, illegal for over two decades. This explained why there were no signs of a struggle – methaqualone rendered the user nearly incapacitated at the proper doses.

"They gave them _Quaaludes?_" Yuffie exclaimed.

Cloud nodded. "Nice strategy. They had to know that between Shera's martial arts and Cid's training with the spear, the two of them could take almost anyone who tried to attack them."

Tifa really surprised him, not bursting into tears, but getting to the job at hand. She'd cry later, she said; right now, the best thing for Cid and Shera was to find the killers and put their friends to rest.

They scoured the crime scene a second time, taking pictures and more evidence and doing a full 3-D rendering of the place with a special gravity camera that Reeve had invented prior to his death. Good thing, too, for that night, the building caught fire. Cid and Shera's house – and the Tiny Bronco, which had been parked next to it and got caught in the blaze – was no more.

The next morning they shipped Cid and Shera's bodies to Wutai, where Yuffie had set aside the area surrounding Vincent. Originally the idea was to put in a zen garden or something equally ridiculous, but Yuffie instead arranged for the couple to be buried next to their friend.

It was a stroke of providence, for that very day, Reeve's body was discovered at the Wutai morgue.

* * *

><p>Two days after finding Cid and Shera, Cloud missed a call on his phone from Barret, highly unusual because there was no message left. Barret always left a message expressing his annoyance at having not reached Cloud directly, his rumbling bass voice vibrating Cloud's phone from thousands of miles away.<p>

A sinking feeling began to descend upon him as he called Yuffie, Nanaki, and Zane to inform them of events. Tifa knew already, as she was sitting next to him.

"Oh, no, not _Barret_," she said, allowing the tears to fall. "Who will tell Marlene?"

"They might not have to," he said, grimly. "Was she at home for the Christmas holidays or off at that boarding school with Denzel?"

Tifa's sobbing reached new levels of distress as Cloud packed up their things for an extended stay abroad. He closed up the bar, jotted a note to put on the door, and when the tiny airship from the WRO air corps landed, had Tifa and their things all ready to go.

* * *

><p>This was the least-traumatizing scene he'd been to yet. Barret had been drugged in his sleep. There was no blood to be found, and he looked about as peaceful as the giant of a man ever got.<p>

Zane completed his blood work in record time and reported back that the former eco-terrorist had been given a sleep-inducing barbiturate in his evening drink, and then was drugged via hypodermic needle with a mixture of potassium chloride and pancuronium bromide.

"The _lethal injection_ mixture?" Cloud replied in astonishment. Zane nodded somberly.

"Whoever it was wanted him dead, wanted to punish him, but they wanted him to go peacefully," Nanaki said. Saying aloud what they were all thinking was a trait that Cloud had missed of the odd feline.

"I expect so," Cloud said. "What made them hate AVALANCHE so much and hate Barret so little?"

There was a silence, and then Yuffie spoke up.

"_Has_ anyone seen Marlene?"

* * *

><p>The headmistress at the special school that Marlene and Denzel attended clicked disapprovingly when she heard Barret's name. As the woman bustled off to get Marlene, Cloud wondered why she seemed to dislike Barret so, but she was the type of person to require a strict sort of order: her hair was in a tight bun, her office was immaculate, and she spoke with a clear accent, no regional-isms sneaking through. Barret probably offended <em>all<em> of her senses.

She'd assured them that Marlene had, in fact, been at the school with Denzel all throughout the last two weeks, the two of them having elected to stay at the school for the winter holidays. This cleared either of the two children of any complicity in the murders, but now the disagreeable duty of informing them that Barret, Cid, Shera, Vincent and Reeve were dead remained.

Yuffie wore a look of disgust; Cloud almost thought she'd hoped Marlene _was_ the killer, because then everything would be solved and safe.

Tifa, the mothering soul that she was, took over the hard duty of telling the two of them, feeling that it was expected of her because she had essentially raised the two of them. Marlene cried, silent little sobs that led Denzel to put his arm over her shoulder and glare at Tifa, as if this were somehow _her_ fault. Without a word, he stood - still a child but now in a man's body - and led his younger sister out of the office, their matching school uniforms rustling quietly in the silence.

There was a long moment where no one said anything.

"Well, _that_ sucked," Yuffie said. Tifa laughed, a little hysterically, and the meeting broke up.


	3. Chapter 3

**The Twelve Days of X-Mas  
><strong>**Chapter Three**

_EDIT: Feel free to head on over to my profile, where you will find a link to download a nicely-formatted PDF e-book of this, in it's entirety, for your perusal offline, thanks to the Fanfiction E-book Project at the Genesis Awards._

The air corps pilot dropped them off at their respective residences, all of them wondering if they would ever see the other again. Cloud wanted to lay low, but Tifa was having none of it. She wasn't going to give the killers the satisfaction of knowing they had her scared shitless, she said, and she continued operations as she'd had them running prior to the whole mess.

Cloud settled in his office and got out a desk calendar. He didn't use the things very often, and this one had a thick layer of dust on it, bearing testament to the fact that Tifa had gotten it for him _last_ Christmas.

Tifa put Christmas music on downstairs. Cloud wasn't really a Christmas person and it drove him insane, but the fact that Tifa restricted her holiday cheer to the two weeks directly prior to Christmas meant a lot to him.

Flipping the calendar open to December, he began jotting information down. Vincent had been killed on the thirteenth, Reeve the fifteenth, Cid and Shera the seventeenth...

His thoughts ground to a halt as he filled in Barret's information, for he'd been killed on the nineteenth. It was now the twentieth of December, and if the pattern held, one of the remaining members of AVALANCHE was going to die tomorrow. Nanaki, Yuffie, Tifa and himself were all that remained. It was a little cocky to say so, but he was almost certain that he would be last, because the pattern of these deaths was so clearly (to him anyway) designed to foil _him_, and no one else.

_On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me..._

Cloud desperately wanted to snarl to Tifa to shut the goddamned radio off, because now was _not_ the time to play Christmas carols. Six of their friends were dead and they were on their way to joining them.

No, not if he could help it. He started trying to draw lines of connection again, and failed so utterly that his head began to ache.

_On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me..._

_That is_ it_,_ Cloud thought, irritably, standing up. He gave the calendar one last glance before heading toward the door to yell at Tifa's godforsaken radio, but he abruptly stopped in place.

Twelve days of Christmas. Vincent had died on the thirteenth, _exactly_ twelve days before Christmas.

Cloud did some mental calculations. Someone would die on the twenty-first, and on the twenty-third, before the grand finale on the twenty-fifth: him and Tifa.

His blood froze. He now had his timetable. And it scared the ever-living _shit_ out of him.

* * *

><p>"You've got to be kidding," Zane said, spluttering into his phone. "Are you <em>sure?<em>"

"Absolutely," Cloud said. "Whoever this is knows my patterns very, very well, or else they would have gone for Cid and Yuffie first, because they're the most visible members of AVALANCHE. But instead they killed the two people I would ask for help from first."

"I think I'm going to change my opinion," Zane said. "I did a little research, and there's an entire subsection of serial killers who plan things like this out. I asked one of our CSI's about it, and it turns out he wrote his thesis about mission-oriented serial killers. I couldn't get him to shut up - even learned they're one of the only kinds of serial killers that actually _regret_ the killing bit. Apparently they see themselves as ridding the world of evil or sin, and regret that they have to _kill_ anyone to do it. Or something." Zane sighed. "Anyway, I think that's what you're dealing with, not a spree killer."

"Are you sure?" Cloud asked.

"As sure as I can be," Zane replied. "If there's another crime scene, keep an eye out for missing items. Most serial killers keep collections of things from the scenes - keepsakes, sort of. You'll know for sure if little mementos start to go missing. Either way, I suggest phoning your two friends and telling them to lay low."

"Already done," Cloud said. "I don't know that it'll fix anything, though. Whoever this is has shown a _lot_ of cunning and intelligence."

" Heh. Well, your mystery ninja killer boogeyman will show his head eventually, although I sincerely hope that they're finished killing people," Zane said.

"I don't think they are," Cloud replied, "but thanks for the sentiment." The coroner chuckled again, which was creepily morbid and sent chills down Cloud's spine.

"Good night, Cloud. I hope it all turns out okay," Zane said.

Cloud hung up without returning the goodbye. He didn't think anything good was going to come of this.

* * *

><p>Cloud was proven right when he received the horrible word from Elder Bugah the next morning that Nanaki had been killed sometime in the night. It was, he said, an internal Cosmo Canyon affair, but Cloud could rest assured that there had been no evidence left behind, as they had done their very own sweep of the room before disposing of Nanaki's body.<p>

It was appropriately gruesome, then, Cloud surmised, and none of the Elders wanted that kind of bad publicity at a place where people sent their children to be schooled. He doubted that Nanaki's corpse could have told him anything the other six corpses hadn't told him anyway.

Now it was just Yuffie, Tifa, and himself left.

Yuffie, Tifa, and himself.

"_Well, your mystery _**ninja**_ killer boogeyman will show his head eventually."_

A shiver went down Cloud's spine. _Yuffie_, he thought. _Yuffie is the killer._

He'd thought she seemed spectacularly surprised at Reeve's death, but she'd always been a pretty good actor – she'd convinced them, after all, to trust her long enough to steal all of their materia, and then to let her back into the group despite the black mark on her record. She hadn't wanted a funeral for Vincent, and Zane himself had even said that mission-oriented killers often regret the need to kill.

Yuffie had one of the only Contain materia in existence with which to cast Flare, the only fire spell strong enough to actually kill Vincent. The only other one that they knew of lay within his own materia vault.

She knew him. Extraordinarily well – she'd solved a helluva lot of cases with him in the past and she knew forensics thoroughly. Well enough to forge two distinct sets of footprints and glove-prints. And she'd helped him so many times in the past, that anyone killing off his compatriots would know to kill her right near the beginning, not at the end.

And every dead member of AVALANCHE - with the exception of Nanaki, who would be buried at Cosmo Canyon with his tribe - was now buried in Wutai. Within walking distance from Yuffie's house.

_"You'll know for sure if little mementos start to go missing."_

Mementos? No, Yuffie was collecting _bodies_.

She'd never seemed particularly unstable, but then again she'd been wandering alone a long time before AVALANCHE met her. It was entirely possible, Cloud surmised, for a sociopath to feign normalcy – they did it all the time in the real world, turning into such fine upstanding citizens as president Shinra, who could order the destruction of Sector 7 and the thousands of lives housed within it while listening to opera and smoking a fine cigar.

Was Yuffie such a sociopath?

Cloud didn't want to stick around and find out. It was his wife's life, and his own, if he screwed up at this late juncture.

He wouldn't give them the opportunity to find out.


	4. Chapter 4

**The Twelve Days of X-Mas  
><strong>**Chapter Four**

_EDIT: Feel free to head on over to my profile, where you will find a link to download a nicely-formatted PDF e-book of this, in it's entirety, for your perusal offline, thanks to the Fanfiction E-book Project at the Genesis Awards._

The trip to Wutai was just as long as it had been the week previous, and less comfortable now that they were traveling incognito and couldn't use an airship. Cloud's gold chocobo resented the cold and wet – for it rained the majority of the trip there – just as much as he did.

Tifa, to her credit, didn't utter a single complaint.

By the time they'd finally arrived in Wutai it was at the tail end of the twenty third. If Yuffie didn't make a move, her timetable would be off.

Was she expecting them? Cloud thought to himself, as they got the chocobo tied up at the public stables, that she probably was. It put him on edge.

_Very_ much on edge. It had started to rain again as they walked from the stables to Yuffie's house, which muffled every sound. Their footsteps were quiet as they walked down the stone path; Yuffie's footsteps would be equally quiet should she come after them. A constant dripping noise sent whispers of sound into every crevice and corner, making his hair stand on end.

As the town's clock tower tolled midnight, Cloud reached up and knocked on Yuffie's front door.

There was no answer.

* * *

><p>Godo's face had gained a few lines over the years, but it was just as red and flustered now as it had been years before. Cloud could almost <em>hear<em> him saying, "Yuffie? Never heard of her."

Still, time had been kind to him, and he didn't look anywhere close to his age.

"Strife?" he said, opening his front door wider. "What are you doing here?"

"Where's Yuffie?" Cloud said. He imagined it sounded very rude coming out like that, but he didn't much care at this point.

"Yuffie? She went to the AVALANCHE graveyard, to give her respects for Christmas Eve," Godo said. Cloud didn't pretend to know anything about the Christmas customs of Wutai, and he had no idea what significance that statement may hold. In fact, he didn't care – he had a possible location for the ninja.

"Thanks," he said shortly, turning off into the night.

He heard Tifa behind him, thanking Godo as well. He was half-tempted to tell her to stay behind and keep herself safe, but Tifa was a fighter. She'd want to be there with him, to the end.

If he went and killed Yuffie, but died in the process, Tifa would never forgive him. Especially if he left her here to wait.

No, they'd stand together and fight.

* * *

><p>It wasn't a very long walk, maybe twenty minutes total. The town graveyard was in the hills above Da Chao, and the little portion that contained his friends' bodies was off to the east. It was a minor hike, but both Tifa and Cloud were in fine physical shape. They didn't even break into a sweat.<p>

Not that one could sweat in this weather. As they got to the higher elevations, the rain turned to snow, which only served to heighten Cloud's sense of alarm. The lights of Wutai's only city reflected off of the snow clouds and turned the sky purple: a false twilight. The snow muffled sounds so much more than the rain did. If he held his breath, the only sound he could hear was his own heartbeat.

The only consolation prize was that footprints were clearly delineated in the snow. Of course, that meant that anyone could track them, but it also meant that he could track anyone else. It was an edge, and Cloud would take it.

When they got to the graveyard a mere three inches or so had fallen to the earth, giving it a sort of soft look. If you didn't look too closely, you couldn't even tell that this was a place where people buried their dead.

"No one's here," Tifa whispered. Her voice didn't carry beyond Cloud's ears.

They stepped carefully, feeling for traps with their toes and seeking enemies with their eyes. It took a few minutes longer than normal, but eventually they stood in the AVALANCHE portion of the cemetery.

Tifa's gasp startled Cloud, and he jerked to face whatever she was seeing.

It was Vincent's grave. Dirt was thrown around and in general it looked a mess. Cloud was no expert, of course, but it looked like they'd just missed a grave robbery.

He gestured for Tifa to keep an eye out around them as he inched closer and peered in.

There was no body. Vincent Valentine – or whatever was left of him – was missing.

* * *

><p>"He's gone," Cloud said, turning toward Tifa. "His body is gone. I think Yuffie took it."<p>

"That's just _sick_," Tifa said, wrinkling her nose. Cloud very much wanted to point out that they were dealing with a serial killer and thus "sick" was kind of a part of the job, but he kept his mouth shut.

He eyed the entire area. He couldn't see any signs of Yuffie dragging the body away, but with the amount of materia the ninja owned it wouldn't surprise him if she had some sort of anti-gravity magic. He couldn't see anywhere that she may have gone, actually, and that sort of unnerved him.

"What now?" Tifa asked him. "Should we go get the police?"

Cloud shook off his sense of unease and surveyed the area one last time. "She'll come back. She wants the rest of the bodies. If we have the police up here, that'll tip her off and let her know that we've figured her out."

Tifa eyed him for a long time. "You want to set a trap," she said. Cloud blessed himself for having married Tifa - she was no one's fool.

"I want to catch her before she catches us," Cloud said. "Let's find somewhere to hunker down."

It took several minutes, but they found a tattered branch to wipe out their tracks. The snow was falling fast now, and if they were careful to wipe out their footsteps any other indentations would be filled in before anyone else was around to see them.

"We need to find somewhere hidden," Cloud said, once they'd left the cemetery proper. "Somewhere we can see her but she can't see us."

"Up," Tifa said, pointing. There was a bit more hill left before one reached the peak, and a large copse of trees stood there. "No one ever remembers to look up."

Cloud smirked at her, and the two of them headed toward the trees. They weren't going to climb them – that would be too obvious, and they _were_ dealing with a ninja – but they would be able to find a decent hiding spot there, Cloud would bet on it.

"Should we split up?" Tifa asked.

"I don't want to," Cloud admitted. "It feels more dangerous to be apart."

"Let's keep in line of sight, then," Tifa suggested. Under the canopy of trees, the snow was falling at a slower pace. It would be easy to keep an eye on each other. Cloud agreed to her plan and the two of them began to search, quietly, for some small, unknown spot from which to launch an ambush.

They'd only been searching for a few minutes when Cloud heard Tifa call out to him.

"Cloud..." she said, and her voice brought him up sharp.

"What's wrong, Tifa?" he called out. What she said next made his heart plummet.

"I think I found Yuffie."

* * *

><p>Cloud rushed to Tifa's side, and for a brief moment he thought that Yuffie was dead. Numerous wounds, which looked to be ice-inflicted, had begun to heal over. Cloud wondered if she'd managed to heal herself before passing out, when a sudden and inescapable conclusion slammed into him.<p>

"Yuffie's not the killer," he said. A rushing sound filled his ears, and he sat very heavily into a snowbank.

Tifa left him there as she leaned over to examine the ninja. "Well, she's definitely _alive_," she said, checking her pulse. "And this was _definitely_ ice. I'd say it was Freeze, which means someone's using the Contain materia again."

"How could she even _survive_ that?" Cloud asked, dazed. "Contain killed _Vincent_. There's no _way_ it wouldn't do the same kind of damage to Yuffie."

"Ah, but she had ice-elemental linked in her armor," Tifa said, pointing. She frowned. "Usually she has fire-elemental. I wonder why she changed?"

They were quiet for a second, and then Cloud spoke, softly. "Yuffie isn't stupid, Teef. She must have realized that the killer – _killers_, probably, now that we can rule her out – was trying to make us believe it was her. If she figured out the pattern, she had to realize that she needed to be unpredictable."

"And of course, Yuffie's first line of defense is materia," Tifa said. Even in this situation, she sounded amused at Yuffie's obsession with materia.

"We've got to get up and get somewhere safe," Cloud said. "We need to get Yuffie revived and find out who's doing this. And then we need to kick some ass."

Tifa smirked up at her husband as she gestured for him to take the younger woman's left side. She slung Yuffie's right arm over her shoulders. "The fire caverns aren't that far from here, and they're warm. Let's go."

* * *

><p>The fire caverns had always mystified Cloud. He could understand why the people of Wutai felt this cavern was sacred. The fires burned eternally, always providing warmth and comfort to those who sought its depths. He had no idea how deep into the cliffside they went: they'd never been able to get past the second bend, even with the Leviathan Scales. Something told him they were immense.<p>

None of this was important right now. All that mattered was the fact that as soon as he entered the caverns, he felt immeasurably _safe_. Something awe-inspiring was watching over this place. They could take a breather here and formulate a game plan.

After a few moments of rest, Tifa sat up next to Yuffie. She spoke the incantation, green sparkles of life flowing from her fingertips to the younger woman's body. The edges of her wounds sealed over, scarring as if they'd been acquired several months previous. Her color, which had been edging toward gray, immediately improved, flushing pink and healthy.

A few seconds after casting Revive, Tifa slumped over, exhausted. She fumbled for an elixir.

A few seconds after _that_, Yuffie inhaled deeply, gray eyes shooting wide open. Her arms lashed out and she sat up so fast she nearly collided with Tifa, who was trying to quaff the elixir she'd finally found.

"Cloud! Tifa!" Yuffie exclaimed. "I'm _so_ glad you're alright!" She threw her arms around Tifa. "I'm so glad to see you that I'm going to forgive you for _ever_ thinking I could do that to Reeve or Vince, Cloud," she said, glaring at him balefully from over Tifa's shoulder.

Cloud grimaced. "_Mea culpa_, but can you blame me?"

"No, not really," Yuffie said, releasing the older woman from her embrace. She stood up and stretched. Cloud always hated how _perky_ Yuffie was after someone cast Revive on her. "Whoever did this was smart. Real smart. Genius-smart, right? And all of the geniuses I know are dead." She turned toward them somberly.

"Whoever? You don't know who it was?" Cloud said, shooting up from his seated position. He began to pace.

"I don't," Yuffie said, shaking her head. She sighed. "Whoever said the incantation had one of those voices that could be male or female, yanno?"

"It could be anyone," Tifa said. She frowned.

"_Exactomundo_, Teefmeister," Yuffie said. "I haven't got any ideas, either. But there were _definitely_ two people there."

"Back to square one, then," Cloud said.

"It could be, but it isn't."

As one, the three of them turned toward the entrance of the fire caverns, where two figures were silhouetted against false twilight.


	5. Chapter 5

**The Twelve Days of X-Mas  
><strong>****Chapter Five****

_EDIT: Feel free to head on over to my profile, where you will find a link to download a nicely-formatted PDF e-book of this, in it's entirety, for your perusal offline, thanks to the Fanfiction E-book Project at the Genesis Awards._

Cloud had never felt more betrayed in his life than at this very moment.

"Denzel? _Marlene?_" Tifa said, sounding as if the foundations of her very universe had just fallen out from under her. Cloud knew how she felt - when Yuffie had brought up the possibility after Barret's murder, Cloud hadn't taken her seriously _at all._ He'd all but raised the both of them, up until they'd left for that school.

He had to admit that he hadn't thought much about the two children the last few years; at seventeen and eighteen (almost nineteen) respectively, Marlene and Denzel had been accepted to a stellar preparatory boarding school near Cosmo Canyon. That had been two years ago this September, and they'd taken to spending their holidays at the school as well. Tifa had thought that the two of them had romantic interests at the school, and so they only ever saw the kids briefly during the summer holiday. Their school uniforms – which matched, he realized, down to the shoe size even though Marlene was _swimming_ in them – did nothing but emphasize their youth.

"The Headmistress said you'd been in school the whole break," Cloud blurted out, belatedly realizing how stupid it sounded. He'd never quite gotten the hang of being a father, even now.

"Of course she did," Denzel sneered. "I cast confusion on her throughout the week. She's an idiot; the spell wasn't hard to hold up."

Marlene stood next to him, timidly, mouth clamped shut. She had a gun in her hand, though, so Cloud wasn't _about_ to underestimate her.

"What the literal _fuck_, man?" Yuffie exclaimed. Marlene swung in her direction, gun pointed forward, but Yuffie was so incensed that she didn't even notice. Yuffie had just turned twenty-nine years old the month previous, but she stomped her foot as if she were still an impatient sixteen-year-old girl.

"Yuffie -" Cloud began.

"No, _fuck this_, man!" Yuffie said, incredulously. "You _cannot_ be serious! The two big bad murderers are the two kids who should be the _most_ fucking grateful to us? Seriously, _what the fuck is wrong with you?_"

"_AVALANCHE killed my family!_" Denzel yelled at her. Yuffie shut up. "They killed my mother and father when Sector 7 came down! They stole my childhood from me! Everything I was supposed to _be_, supposed to _do_, AVALANCHE _ruined!_"

He spun around, gesturing at Cloud with his pistol. Absently, Cloud noted that it was a standard-issue Glock 9 mm, and resolved to have a stern talk with the quartermaster at WRO Headquarters.

"_He_ killed my parents! _He_ ruined my life!" Every time Denzel emphasized "he," he jabbed the pistol at Cloud. Cloud did not flinch; he'd survived gunshots before, and he'd survive them again. As long as Denzel was pointing a gun at him, he wasn't pointing it at Yuffie or Tifa.

"That's twisted. That's fucking _twisted_," Yuffie said. "You guys are fucking _idiots_. We didn't drop that plate; hell, half of AVALANCHE wasn't even _in_ _AVALANCHE_ then. You're killing innocent people and doing a piss-poor job of it!"

"Yeah, well, it _worked_, didn't it?" Marlene shot off, the words tumbling out of her mouth. Denzel shot her a look of annoyance and she clammed right up again.

"Why, Marlene?" Cloud wondered aloud, stalling for time to try to piece together a plan.

"Barret," Denzel said, smiling triumphantly.

Yuffie slapped her hand to her forehead. " Goddammit. She even went to see a psychologist about it, remember Cloud?"

He did. She'd been having nightmares and went to the psychologist, who'd diagnosed her as having trust issues after Barret confessed the truth about her biological father and what had led to his demise.

"She tried to tell me," Tifa said, quietly. "She tried to tell me that Denzel was making her do things, poisoning her mind, and I thought she meant she was having bad dreams."

"You all deserve it," Marlene said, her anger coming forth now, her timidity toward her older brother-figure forgotten. "You left me to rot and you deserve to die. _All of you._"

Cloud could practically _see_ the scars on her soul, and for a brief second, he agreed with her. They'd failed her as parents and they deserved what they got.

Then common sense reasserted itself. "We were trying to save the goddamn _world_," he snapped. He immediately regretted the harsh words, as Denzel grinned maniacally and pointed at Tifa with his pistol.

Yuffie stretched back into a stance that Cloud recognized, although he didn't know if Marlene or Denzel did: it was her battle position. Cloud wondered if she had any ninja stars hidden in pockets or if she was going to try to go after the two teenagers by hand. She was nearly as good at hand-to-hand combat as Tifa was, but he doubted that either of them could outrun bullets.

"Don't even think about it, Yuffie," Denzel said, switching his aim to her. "I'll kill you _first_."

"I dare you, punk," Yuffie said, eyes flashing. Cloud knew that Yuffie was terrified of guns. They weren't like swords or shuriken. They didn't forgive. They just made dead bodies. But she was covering up that fear excellently, because she was well and truly _pissed off_.

"No materia immunity this time, Yuffie," Denzel said, dispassionately. "Bullets are for _real_."

"Blah blah blah," Yuffie said, crouching down low. "I was friends with Vinnie Valentine for _thirteen years_ and I never _once_ got shot. And he was a _way_ better shot than you are." And then she took off, darting around like liquid silver and leading Denzel away from Tifa and Cloud.

A gunshot rang out, and the world turned red.

* * *

><p>Marlene gasped. Her gun fell to the ground as her hands flew to her mouth. Red blossomed brightly over her white shirt.<p>

"When you decide to kill someone," a familiar voice said, sardonically, "it would be in your best interest to make sure that they can, in fact, _die_."

Denzel rushed to his sister's side. "How is that _possible_?" he cried, hands fluttering around Marlene, trying to staunch the blood.

Vincent Valentine, wearing what Cloud could only assume was a stolen pair of jeans and a T-shirt, stood at the back of the cave. The clothing bore singe marks and Cloud realized that Vincent had literally come through the depths of the fire caverns to get here. Cerberus glinted brightly in his right hand, and his left was gauntlet-clad as usual.

Cloud would ponder the specifics later, but right now he was so _very_ happy that Yuffie had insisted on burying him with his gun.

Marlene's breathing was coming in shorter breaths, and then just as suddenly as it had begun, it ended and Marlene Wallace was no more. No theatrics, no drama – she was just _gone_. Denzel cried out in anger and took up his gun again, this time focusing exclusively on Cloud.

Cerberus issued his cry, and Denzel fell short of his goal a mere three feet from Cloud.

"Next time," Cloud said, "let's not leave it so late." He sat down very heavily, seeing but not seeing his adoptive son's dead body.

He'd deal with his feelings tomorrow. Today, they were alive.

* * *

><p>Yuffie didn't like the idea of leaving their bodies in the fire caverns to be consumed, but she agreed that it was really the only way to ensure that the two would never be found. They'd simply come up missing, and no one would ever know the truth.<p>

By the time they finished the grisly work of binding the bodies and letting Vincent disappear with them into the bowels of the fire caverns, it was nearing noon, and the snow was letting up. Cleaning up the mess had taken more time than Cloud had thought it would.

Tifa was dead on her feet, Yuffie not so far behind her. Even Cloud, with his enhanced metabolism, could stand a nap. In fact, the only person in their group who looked utterly normal was Vincent.

"How the _hell_ are you even alive?" Yuffie demanded, as they began the trek down Da Chao.

"As I said," Vincent replied, "I cannot die. It is the curse of Chaos. I very painfully reconstituted in my casket. They would have done better to cast Flare on my heart."

"Huh," Yuffie said. "I guess Shera's catholic sensibilities saved your ass." She blinked. "We were _gonna_ have you cremated, but she was horrified when we mentioned it."

Vincent was quiet for a second. "That _may_ have prevented my reconstitution."

Yuffie grinned wickedly.

* * *

><p>They sneaked back into town, getting to Yuffie's house via her super-secret underground passageway that Cloud was in no way surprised to discover existed. Yuffie's reasoning for the subterfuge was that no one knew Vincent was alive yet. Vincent's reasoning was that they didn't know if Marlene and Denzel had been working alone.<p>

Cloud was pretty sure they had been – they'd been alone for so long that reaching out for help seemed unlikely at this juncture. But Vincent had survived this long on being paranoid (and, apparently, immortal), and Cloud wasn't about to gainsay him.

"How did you get into the fire caverns?" Yuffie asked, as they slid up a trap door that led into her basement hallway.

"There are several entrances and exits to most cavern systems," Vincent said. "This is not my first time in Wutai."

They all went silent, pondering the implications of that statement.

"I found the entrance when I was a Turk," he explained further.

"Right," Yuffie declared, as they entered her kitchen and she stoked the fire. "As soon as we get the matter of you still being alive settled, you are _so totally_ showing me everything you know about Wutai."

Vincent merely looked resigned.

* * *

><p>They slept well into the evening, but Yuffie drew the line at actually allowing them to miss the start of the holiday. At eleven thirty she woke the lot of them up with hot cocoa (Vincent refused to even consider drinking it, which Yuffie pouted over for a solid ten minutes) and Christmas cookies. Cloud was surprised to find, but said nothing about, the fact that while they'd all slept, she'd apparently fussed with her altar. It now bore smoking incense, a bowl of rice, and plate of pickles. Chopsticks stuck out of the bowl at right angles, and Cloud suspected she'd left the food out for their dearly departed friends.<p>

Yuffie seemed determined to remain cheerful, even going so far as to put Christmas music on, but as the clock tower struck midnight, her happy facade crumbled.

"You don't have to pretend everything's alright," Cloud pointed out, taking a sip of his hot chocolate, which Yuffie had doctored with peppermint schnapps.

"I know," Yuffie said, wiping tears from her eyes and sniffing loudly. Vincent pointedly looked out a window, and Tifa leaned over to touch Yuffie's arm, sympathetically. "It just feels wrong to have Christmas when they're all gone."

"Life goes on," Vincent said. Cloud was startled to hear anything resembling words of comfort passing his lips. "The best way to honor those who have gone before us is to go forward, not to live with one foot in the past."

They stared at him.

"I am aware of the irony of my statement," Vincent continued.

It was like a dam had broken inside him, and Cloud laughed. And laughed and laughed, and when Tifa and Yuffie joined in, he laughed some more, and eventually the three of them were in a pile under the table, slightly drunk and laughing hysterically. Vincent looked vaguely amused.

"I think this is the start of a wonderful new tradition," Yuffie said. "The Christmas Morning Drink-Off. Same time, same place, next year?"

"Sure thing," Tifa said gamely. "Next time, though, _I'm_ making the drinks."

Cloud chuckled. He glanced up just in time to see Vincent smiling a legitimate smile at the group of them, and he nodded understanding.

Broken things could be fixed. Vincent was living proof.

They were going to be alright.


End file.
